


Fives Times Sarah Rogers Gave Bucky Barnes Advice + One Time Bucky Gave Sarah Advice

by TaleWorthTelling



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Knitting, Minor description of injury
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-03
Updated: 2014-07-18
Packaged: 2018-02-07 07:59:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1891335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaleWorthTelling/pseuds/TaleWorthTelling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What the title says. Very short and sweet, slice-of-life moments of Sarah and Bucky's relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Thing to Do

**Author's Note:**

> I'm working on a longer fic and needed kind of a quick side thing, so why not some Sarah Rogers?

Sarah was getting ready to leave for her second job when someone rapped on the door. Before she’d had a moment to cross the room and ask who it was, it opened and in poured twelve-year-old James Barnes from up the street. She had a smart comment on the tip of her tongue for only a moment before she assessed the state he was in and shut her mouth. He was favoring his right arm, which was bloody and torn up from shoulder to palm, and a bruise bloomed out from his temple. He wouldn’t put weight on his right ankle and he was covered in grit and dirt.

His eyes looked a little wet.

“What’s happened here?” she asked instead. “How’d I come to find you in such a state?”

He shrugged carefully, wincing anyway, and gulped loudly. “I, um … I’m real sorry, Mrs. Rogers … But my ma is gonna be sore at me and I didn’t wanna bother her yet. She’s been working extra all week.”

So had Sarah, but she didn’t really think that was the reason. It didn’t matter, though. “Where’s Steve?”

“Sweeping at the shop like every Thursday.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be out selling newspapers?”

His gaze cut away quickly to the floor.

She sighed. “Sit. Take off that shirt; it’s in tatters.”

It was unpleasant watching him painfully peel the ruined shirt away from the scrapes and a couple of seeping gashes, but Sarah’d seen much worse than a boy who’d been shoved to the ground.

She gathered her kit. “Does anything else hurt?”

“No, ma’am.” He sat very still as she worked, breathing focused and even, back straight. When she reached the wounds on his hand he flinched a little, shiver trickling down his spine, but he tensed and recovered quickly. “They just shoved me around a bit, knocked me into the pavement. They only kicked me once. It wasn’t that bad.”

Her eyes were drawn toward the red mark on his abdomen, right over one hip, that was clearly turning darker by the minute. _They only kicked me once_. Her shoulders tensed.

Sarah spent twenty minutes picking gravel and bits of debris out of that child’s arm. She narrowed her eyes at him disapprovingly, lips thin, but she was touched that this reed of a thing would feel so strongly about her Steve. Anyone who loved him as fiercely as this boy surely did had a place in her heart and at her table. She didn’t know when it had happened; she worked so much and spent so much time away from Steve that sometimes it was hard to keep up with the goings-on of his young life. Somewhere along the line James had wormed his way under Steve’s skin and taken hold with a firm grip and bruised knuckles.

Still, she knew her son. If he came home bloody, she knew that the likely cause was not that he was being bullied for who he was, but for who he refused to be: someone who would stand idly by while others suffered the evil attentions of ignorant souls. No one laid a hand on Steve that he didn’t court, since mostly no one noticed him at all until he spoke up, and she loved that about him, even if she wished that some days he would just keep quiet and slide on by. But it was really down to her, for teaching him those things.

She hadn’t known that he’d take them to heart so young, so seriously.

And when James showed up bloody, she knew why that was, too.

When she finally had his arm clean, she gave it a good scrub with iodine soap for good measure and wrapped it in gauze. She checked his ankle and found it only a little swollen, nowhere near a bad sprain.

He looked up and down his arm, pride written all over his face, and grinned at her. “Thanks, Mrs. Rogers. I’m sorry I bothered you, but this was nice of you.”

“Don’t think of it, James,” she said, waving her fingers dismissively, hands full of supplies to be put away. “This is what I do.”

“Still.”

She flashed a smile at him before she turned away to tidy up. “It’s awfully nice of you to fight Steve’s battles for him. Lord knows he finds enough of them.”

“No, I started it—”

“James. Do you think I don’t know my son? He may not have put you up to it, but he damn sure dragged you into it.”

“He didn’t make me,” James insisted. “I wanted to.”

“I know.” She looked at him seriously. “Sometimes the loyal thing to do, though, the honorable thing, isn’t to charge into battle after your friends. Sometimes the thing to do is stand in their way and talk them down.”

James snorted, not terribly uncouthly, but definitely skeptical. “I thought you said you knew him.”

Sarah laughed. “I didn’t say it was the easy thing, boy.”

When she picked up a rag to wipe down the table, he gingerly took it from her hands to clean it instead, carefully tracing the whorls in the wood and not looking at her. “It really was me, this time. I walked with Steve to the Edelsteins’ shop so he could tidy up, ‘cause it was on my way, and I left to go pick up my newspapers, and when I got there … When I got there, these _jerks_ started in on me, saying nasty stuff, y’know, like, ‘Hey, ain’t that the skinny twerp’s friend?’ ‘You mean the mouthy punk I’d like to teach a lesson, that one?’ and … stuff I ain’t gonna say to his mother, ma’am, respectfully.” He scrubbed harder suddenly. “And they came at _me_ ,” he said hotly. “And I just…”

“Saw red?”

The tips of James’s ears pinked. He looked up at her through his long lashes, biting the inside of his cheek. “Yeah.”

“Temper runs in the family,” she said easily. “You stick around our folk long enough, it sets you alight, too.”

His eyes widened.

Her Steve was angelic, alright, amazing her all of the time and showering her with love and pride, but there was so much anger in that boy sometimes that she couldn’t believe no one could see it for what it was.

James did. She thought he might understand. He was very perceptive for being so young, especially about all matters related to sickly, opinionated blond boys.

He finished wiping the table and thanked her again before he went home, saying he’d be by soon under better circumstances.

Sarah was late to work. Only a little, though, and the doctor let it slide. She told him that she’d had to tend to her boy.

 

When James showed up with a broken nose and a face-splitting grin two months later, Sarah shook her head, exhausted from work and cold from the snow. “James, we talked about this,” she began warningly.

“No, I know, Mrs. Rogers! It worked!”

His words were muffled but cheerful, and Sarah was perplexed. What could this child possibly be celebrating?

“Steve tried to break up this fight in an alley” – oh _heavens_ , the words she was going to have with Steven Rogers – “and I said, ‘N’uh, uh, Steve. No way. They look like they got razors.’ And he was stubborn but I threw a rock to get their attention” – Sarah counted very slowly in her head to ten – “and you could see the razors glinting and everything then, and they kind of turned toward us, all pissed, and I ran and I dragged Steve with me and he budged, on account of the guy they were beating up got away when I threw that rock.”

“They caught up with you?” she asked nervously. As James got wound up in his excited rendition of the adventure, he hadn’t noticed the mother’s worry running wild across Sarah’s face. Steve couldn’t run fast, bless his heart.

“Nah, I outfoxed ‘em. We got away. I _dragged_ Steve along. Almost carried him on my back!”

“James … ” Her patience was just about done. She bit the tip of her tongue for three seconds, then spoke firmly. “ _Who_ broke your _nose_?”

James’s eyes crinkled in confusion for a moment and he touched his fingertips to the ugly swelling, almost like he’d forgotten about it entirely. “Oh. No one. I was so jazzed, I tripped.” His eyes darkened. “You oughta tell Steve it ain’t nice to laugh at someone when they fall on their face, even if you do help ‘em up.”


	2. Family Here

Sarah caught on that James had been telling his mother he was sleeping at Steve’s place and staying out with girls instead when he was sixteen. To say that she disapproved had been putting it mildly.

James was a good kid, responsible and smart and considerate, kind to his peers and young children and respectful to his elders. Downright charming, really. Which was the problem, of course, because his one real distraction (aside from the impending stress ulcer in the shape of her son) was girls. He was good to them, too, and word got around, and he realized that he liked the attention. Sarah didn’t really think there was anything too inappropriate going on. James didn’t seem the type to take risks like that with someone else. But he had lied, and he had used her and her son to do it, and Sarah could not abide by that.

When she asked Steve what he knew about this, knowing that he couldn’t have been ignorant but suspecting that he hadn’t liked it either, he frowned deeply. It took him a moment to meet her eyes, but he’d yet to encounter the situation shameful enough that he completely refused. “He’s not really doing anything bad,” Steve assured.

“Then he picked a hell of a bad way to go about doing a good thing,” she countered.

Steve’s brow crinkled in thought. “I know. He’s … working some stuff out lately. It’s been hard on him.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“That’s Buck’s business, Ma,” Steve said firmly, and she knew that his word was his bond and he couldn’t be budged. He deflated a little. “He’ll be okay. I’ll talk to him again about the girls.”

“I’ll be talking to him as well, Steve.”

Steve’s eyes widened.

She raised an eyebrow. “Did you think I’d be leaving it to you?”

“You don’t trust me?” He was dangerously close to pouting.

“Don’t be silly, Steve. This isn’t about trust. He pulled me into this. You talk to your friend, and I’ll be having words with him as well, and we’ll take care of him together.”

 

Sarah made her move when James was walking Steve home after yet another double date. Steve looked grumpy, which wasn’t the way to a girl’s heart, but she’d save that discussion for another day.

James made to leave, clapping Steve on the shoulder and smiling warmly.

“Hold it,” Sarah said sternly

James turned toward her, puzzled and wary at her tone. “Yes, ma’am?”

“Steve, goodnight,” she said pointedly.

His gaze shifted between them for a few seconds before he shrugged, nodded at James, and went to his room. The privacy was an illusion; the room was more or less a closet and the walls were tissue paper, but that wasn’t the point. She waited until his door closed.

“Did you say goodnight to your girls, James?”

He tucked his hands under his arms and leaned back against the table. “Sure. Of course. Clara and Amelia, nice girls. Steve and Amelia really hit it off, I think. She likes art.”

“And were you planning on seeing them again?”

“I was thinking we could get to know each other a little better,” he said slowly. He was tilting his head to the side, trying to get a read on her and clearly failing.

“Were you thinking of doubling back and seeing her tonight?”

His mouth fell open. He recovered quickly, but he still looked at her a little sideways, like he wasn’t sure what she’d pull from her sleeve next.

“I know, James,” she soothed. “And I need you to think about what you’re doing, and I need you to knock it off.”

“I haven’t hurt anyone,” he argued.

“You’ll hurt your mother when she realizes you haven’t been true to your word, and you’ll scare the devil out of her when she figures out why.”

“We haven’t—”

“I’m sure you haven’t. I know you’re better than that. But you’re going to hurt your friendship, too, using it this way, putting Steve in that position. And me.”

James looked stricken. She knew the respect he had for her and how much her respect meant to him.

“You’re a smart boy,” she continued. “I know things have been rocky at home with your mother sick. I know you’re figuring some things out about yourself.” She paused, considering how deep she needed to dredge.  “You’re lonelier than you admit.”

“I’ve got Steve,” he said a little sullenly, his characteristic charm snuffed out. He looked like what he was: a tired, over-wrung boy with too many responsibilities and not enough outlets.

“That boy is a ball of light and warmth in a dark place,” she agreed, “but you can’t set yourself to follow him everywhere. You’ll burn up. And you know it.”

James slumped even further into himself.

She tested the waters of something she’d suspected for a long time. “It’s not just the girls, is it, James?”

His head jerked up, eyes wide in panic. That was her answer.

“Steve will come around,” she said gently. “And if there are other boys, you can go to them. He’ll still love you. There’s plenty of time. But you’ve got to be careful, and you’ve got to be honest with yourself. There’s nothing worth doing that you’ve got to sneak around your family to get.”

He swallowed hard. “My parents aren’t like you, Mrs. Rogers. They’re good folks, but…”

She nodded. “Then you’ll just have to bring your suitors here.”

The shock on his face was almost comical.

She clucked her tongue at him. “I said _family_. You’re family here, too, boy. Besides, you told your mother you were staying here. Now it’s the truth.

“Get those shoes off, now. I just swept. Spare blanket’s in the wardrobe like always.”

He wordlessly toed off his shoes and set his jacket over the back of the couch, disagreement having clearly never crossed his mind. When Sarah Rogers told you that you were staying the night, you took off your shoes and stayed the night.

Sarah smiled and went to go check in on Steve. When she opened the door, he had his pillow pressed over his head, trying to give them some privacy. Ever the gentleman, her Steve. She rolled her eyes as she tugged it off.

“Goodnight, Ma,” he said, kissing her on the cheek. “Buck leave yet?”

“He’s taking the couch.”

He looked surprised, but he settled back into his narrow bed to go to sleep, always content to have James near.

Sarah wondered if some part of him realized.  They had time, though. They were young.


	3. A Boy And His Father

James had been sleeping on Sarah’s couch for the better part of a week. Now, Sarah’s father had been gone for a long time, and she couldn’t say she’d gotten the chance to watch Joseph be a father to Steve in more ways than the pride of new life, but she could still tell when there was friction between a man and his son. It was eating at the boy, and he clearly didn’t know what to do.

Sarah didn’t want to get between the two, as it wasn’t her place and the ground was uneven here. Far be it from her to tell a man how to raise his son. But she knew there was love there on both sides, not malice, and it hurt to see James so twisted up over this.

Still, she thought the solution might be within reach.

Sarah scraped up an extra dollar here and there to bake a nice pie to take over the Barnes’s house. She wasn’t the most inspired baker, but she’d never had any complaints, and that was simply the thing you did when you came to call unexpectedly.  (In point of fact, during rougher times she’d had neighbors and friends stop by almost constantly, ostensibly just to say hello and ask after Steve, but they’d always had a bite to eat with them and then, conveniently, would realize they weren’t hungry, and could she just be a dear and take it off their hands so they didn’t have to carry it all the way back down the hall, thanks? And that would be that. Sarah didn’t view it as charity, even if she was the poor widow with the young child on the floor; it was the neighborly thing, to look after one another, and Steve could always use more food. She passed on their kindness in turn.)

John Barnes was a good man, like James was shaping up to be, and he had a certain unexpected warmth about him that she could sense under his skin, the kind that surfaced when you looked away; but she couldn’t say that she’d ever found him easy to know. She was a busy woman, and he a busy man with ideas about propriety in the company of an unmarried woman that she felt were a little old-fashioned, but she’d abide. He treated Steve with respect and didn’t talk down to him just because of his age or infirmity, and that was what mattered. Mostly he and James had been close until Henrietta’s illness had broken the balance they’d become accustomed to and rocked their world, so used to everything working as expected and everyone being healthy.

Except James, of course, who had stood by Steve through many illnesses and unexpected turns. It was difficult to let herself think about, Steve being unwell (how pale he’d been, how listless and fever-hot, then lifeless and chilled to the bone; how he’d cried out for her when he was half-gone, and there was nothing she could do but wait and hope), but there was an unshakeable bond between them, her and James, forged from their time shared in the trenches of Steve’s sickbed. He’d never flinched away, even when she wouldn’t have blamed him, child that he was, and loyalty of that hue didn’t just fall from the sky; so she’d return it in kind as well.

By all accounts, John hadn’t handled the news well, romantic that he was, and although he’d done his best, James seemed to have fared much better at handling his younger siblings while dealing with his own anxiety.  He hadn’t abandoned his children, but he hadn’t been himself – had been distant and short, consumed with his own worry instead of assuaging theirs– and that was enough to upset the boat. James had been angry with him all year, even after Henrietta recovered and tried to soothe them both.

James wouldn’t hear of it. The stinging betrayal shone in his eyes and the set of his jaw when he avoided the subject of his father, and that was enough to tell Sarah everything she needed to know. He had stepped up. His father, he felt, had not.

And things boiled down to that kind of simplicity in his mind, black and white and ugly all over.

She didn’t know what the latest row had been about, but it didn’t really matter in the scheme of things, since that was only a symptom, and Sarah was going to treat the source.

 

The Barnes children were all in school when Sarah stopped by bearing her pie and her common sense, but it was Mr. Barnes’s day off. He answered the door promptly, smartly dressed even at home and worn around the edges.

“Hello, Mrs. Rogers.” He smiled at her, genuine if a little confused and frayed, eyes just like James but missing the fondness. “What brings you here? Is Steve well?”

“Well as he can be,” she confirmed.

He stepped aside to let her in.

She followed him into the kitchen and sat down when he pulled out a chair for her. “It’s James, really,” she began, not in the least surprised when his expression shuttered right up to lock away the frustration. “You’ll have noticed that he hasn’t been home much this past week.”

“I have.” His tone was light but guarded, and so she chose her words carefully. She was in his kitchen, after all, discussing his affairs.

“Young men can hold a grudge like none else I’ve seen. I know your burden. I know he’s kept you at arm’s length for some time. But he needs his father. He needs his family in one piece again and he doesn’t know how to mend it.”

“What exactly do you think I’ve been trying to do?” He folded his arms across his broad chest, muscles flexing perhaps a mite more than necessary, but she wasn’t a woman easily deterred.

“I think you’ve been trying to earn his forgiveness, but he doesn’t want to forgive you, sir, he wants to look up to you again. He wants you to be his father.” _He wants to respect you again. Give him someone to look up to. One of his own. Be the leader._

He snorted. “He wants me to stop dictating the terms of his life.”

“Maybe it’s time.”

“He’s seventeen,” Mr. Barnes said.

“Exactly,” Sarah replied. “He’s seventeen years old, Mr. Barnes. He’s got the duties of a man and none of the respect. He’s grown, and grown well. You’ve raised a good boy there. Let him prove it.”

A flicker of indignation passed over his face, but whatever he’d taken issue with, he didn’t voice it. “You can call me John, Mrs. Rogers.”

“Then I’ll be Sarah to you, I suppose, and that’ll be enough of the formalities. Would you like some pie?”

 

They talked more over rhubarb pie and coffee, and what it came down to was this:

“He doesn’t want to join the service,” John said, shoulders slumped. “Used to be all he could talk about; now you’d think he was ashamed.”

This was the first Sarah was hearing about this, but it wasn’t surprising that he’d keep this particular thing to himself. John was a career soldier and James’s childhood pride in his father had been a fierce and unshakeable thing; of course James wouldn’t want to talk about his disappointment.

“That’s a big decision, though. It’s his right.”

“I know,” he said. “I _know_. And I don’t want to force him to do anything. I just can’t stand that he’s so angry with me, he’d let it color his decisions. His _life_. I tried to do right by him, Sarah, by all of them. I really did. Henrietta was just so sick, needed so much … It was hard to look up sometimes and see anything else. Listen, I couldn’t be prouder of how James stepped up to take care of the kids. I thought we had an understanding, him and me.”

Well, no one had told James, clearly.

“You know,” he continued in a very quiet voice, looking out the window, “some nights, I’d come home and find he’d put them to bed, and I’d look in on them … and a few times they had nightmares. Maybe the stress, maybe just kid stuff, I don’t know. But I was standing right there, and they wanted James. So I stood aside and let him go to them." He shut his eyes, head tilted back and heavenward before he shook it slowly and opened them again. “I don’t know how to be more than just the man who brings them groceries and pays the rent. I used to. I don’t know what happened.”

She slid her hand over his fingers and gave them a gentle squeeze. “Take the kids out. Make them smile again. I’ll work on James. I’ll take care of him until he’s ready to come home.”

He smiled, and he was much more handsome when he did. James came by it honestly.

 

James was washing dishes in her kitchen while Steve dried. Dinner had been a quiet affair for once, the boys oddly subdued. Sarah rarely had a free moment to herself, so she knitted while she contemplated the best way to approach James about the subject – she’d been dropping hints the last few days, but it wasn’t enough. He was stubborn. She was confident, however, that she’d dealt with men (and one boy in particular) more stubborn than he was.

She liked to knit socks and hand them out to whoever had holes in theirs or went without entirely. When a woman had a new child, she threw in a hat, too. When they finished the dishes, Steve settled himself at the table with a pulp novel and James sat down on the couch with empty hands, seeming content to watch her hands move.

After a time, he asked if he could try.

She wordlessly handed over the mess of yarn and skinny wooden needles sticking every which way.

He ran his fingers over the soft gray wool before picking up the working needle and staring hard at the beginning of the sock in concentration, tongue between his teeth and eyes scrunched. He didn’t ask what to do, just looked like he was going through the motions in his mind. After a moment his clumsily made his first stitch.

He looked at it in distaste before trying another stitch, then another, and they all looked different. His expression soured worse, but he was determined as the yarn moved around the needles and he had to switch to the next one.

She laughed. “It’s the tension. That’s why it looks funny. That’ll come with practice, when you learn how to hold it to your liking.” Still, for having picked it up just from watching her, he was doing very well.

Steve looked up from his book and grinned. “You should show him how to do it English style, Ma, make his head explode.”

“Think you can do this better?” James challenged.

Steve raised his eyebrows. He carefully marked his page with an empty matchbook, set the book down, and walked over to James, where he stood behind him and leaned comfortably over the back of the couch, elbows resting on James’s shoulders. He wrapped slender fingers around James’s larger hands and lightly wound the yarn around his index finger, closing his other fingers over the trailing yarn, and guiding his hands through the motions. Unlike Sarah and James, who were left-handed, Steve was ambidextrous and adjusted quickly to the orientation.

James was holding his breath, his expression resembling a panicked animal. Steve didn’t seem to have noticed. Sarah had to look away, for James’s sake.

James got into the rhythm of the stitches and soon enough had made his first complete round.

“Looks good, Buck. You’ll be churning out watch caps in no time.” Steve clapped him on the shoulder and then returned to his book. Before long, he remembered that he’d needed to talk to Mrs. Grey down the hall, and left the two of them alone.

James exhaled a long breath, almost melting back into the couch. When he caught Sarah looking at him fondly, he flashed her a sheepish little smile.

He offered the sock back to her, but she gestured for him to continue, settling further into her chair and propping her chin in her hand to watch him. “What made you want to give it a shot?” she asked.

“Becca’s birthday’s comin’ up,” he said. He lifted one shoulder in a shrug, accidentally knocking the ball of yarn to the floor, where it rolled off a couple of feet, unspooling. “She likes this kind of stuff. I thought –  I don’t know, it’s dumb. I thought I could make her something simple.”

“You can make whatever you set your mind to.”

He shrugged again, eyes for nothing but the yarn passing through his fingers, woven with care into a recognizable shape. Every time he tugged a little on the working yarn to get more slack the ball tilted and rolled a little further away. “She had this hat she really loved. Aunt Mae made it, you know, before she died. Anyway, it got wrecked last month. She was pretty upset. I thought …”

“Coming from you, she’ll love it,” Sarah assured. “She adores you.”

His lips crooked in that same little smile again, the private one she wasn’t sure he noticed himself doing.

“They all do,” she continued. “You’re a good big brother.”

“I’m what they’ve got,” he said.

“I know a thing or two about that. I was the oldest, you know. Whole mess of young ones.”

“Yeah?” James looked up, genuinely curious. She didn’t talk about her family much, for reasons she felt were fairly obvious.

“Sure. Good kids, the lot of them. Pains in the neck, too.” She paused, shifting in her seat, letting out a heavy sigh. “We’ve parted ways, my family and I. The ones that didn’t meet unfortunate ends I left back in the old country.”

His idle hands fell to his lap now. His eyes were serious, brow creased. “Was it hard, leaving them?”

“Very. But I had no choice, understand, and they didn’t want to come, or else they couldn’t.”

He wound the yarn around his fingers absently, worrying his lip between his teeth. “I saw Tommy today. He said Dad took him fishing.”

“Have you ever been fishing?”

He shook his head. “Nah. Whole city smells like fish anyway. I get enough of them.”

“So if, say, your father asked you…”

He huffed. “I’d tell him it was a dumb idea and go find something better to do.”

She frowned. Sarah had felt great loss in her short lifetime, and felt keenly the separation of those still living but unreachable. It broke her heart to see the spreading ocean between a man and his son with naught but a single street between them.

“James,” she tried again, “maybe you should go. I’m sure Tommy would love to have the both of you there.”

He narrowed his eyes in suspicion, then handed the yarn and needles back without a word, crossing his arms over his chest.

Maybe, after her subtle attempts the past few days, straightforward was the way to go. “He misses you. I know you wish things had been different – and I feel for you, James, you know I do – but you’re only leaving two hearts heavier for the effort. He can’t change the past.”

He didn’t respond for a long time, but she was confident that he would. He had, after all, been raised with manners, and her hospitality was worth a lot to him. “I just don’t get why he acted like he was some kind of special victim of all this, you know? She’s our mother, too, even if she was his wife first.”

“I’ve seen many people through many difficult illnesses. Many of them didn’t make it. It may surprise you to know, boy, but you’re a special breed of tough; not everyone handles these times of raw humanity and uncertainty as well as you. Indeed, most don’t. They haven’t all had the practice.”

He looked at her sadly. Steve was his best friend, but he was her son, and he was all she had. He’d been aware of the difference from the beginning and, no matter how close he and Steve grew, no matter how fiercely James guarded him, he could never grasp completely what it was to feel your heart stop and not start beating again until your child’s breaths grew strong. The joy of watching Steve’s chest gently rise and fall was a simple one that they shared, but his world wouldn’t stop turning without Steve, even if he might wish it, and hers would.

He knew that.

Maybe that’s why she felt so strongly for John Barnes. She knew what it was to feel your son slipping through your fingers.

“No one’s perfect, James. There’s no secret. We’re all just trying our best, or trying when we can, or some of us not at all. Your father’s a good man who lost his way. You don’t have to forgive him. But maybe you can get to know each other again. You’re not a child anymore. You’re both men. Meet him on your own terms.”

“Why does it even matter, though?”

“Because try as you might to hide it, you miss him, too. This thing’s got hold of you and it’s dragging you down like a limp. You’re not happier without him, and I want to see you happy again. I think you’re just misunderstanding each other.”

“What’s there to understand?”

“That’s not for me to find out,” she said. “I can sense a lot about people, but the details are your own. You’ll have to learn each other again.”

Bucky looked skeptical, but he reached for the needles to practice some more and he kept his mouth shut.

Sarah left him to his thoughts and pulled out another set of needles. Maybe a hat this time.

 


End file.
